Transition or Transformation? The Mediated Meanings of Sustainability

Abstract

This chapter takes the discursive character of sustainability as a point of departure for arguing that what sustainability means is mediated and refracted by the interactive technologies used to engage the public with it. Four such meanings are introduced: from the perspective of technologies designed to promote sustainable behaviour sustainability is practiced as a balance to restore. Through gaming and simulation media sustainability is addressed as a complex problem to solve. With immersive technologies sustainability is felt as a deep relation to the world. And with speculatively designed media sustainability emerges as a social imaginary. The chapter concludes by suggesting that some of sustainability’s meanings lend themselves to systemic policy innovation and management – the kind of interventions sought by those pursuing sustainability transitions – while other meanings are more conducive to the kind of radical, open-ended changes associated with deep social transformation.